


to dance again

by chatterghosts



Category: Who Killed Markiplier? (Web Series)
Genre: Dancing, Darkiplier - Freeform, Darkstache - Freeform, F/M, M/M, Wilford Warfstache Needs A Hug, anyway WHERE is the dark!celine content, anyway if u like the niche of sad people dancing, i don’t want to use the tag darkstache bc i cant take it seriously but god., i guess, sad people are sad, william centric because i be like [loves him too damn much], yall got no TENDERNESS i have to do everything myself smh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:26:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25371598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chatterghosts/pseuds/chatterghosts
Summary: For as long as he can remember, Wilford has made it a point to visit the Manor on October 11th.He couldn’t remember why anymore. The wheres and whens and the faces were lost to time, but he never brought himself to mind; forgetting things was routine. And though he’s lost so very much, he knows that the subjectivity of memories cannot be trusted — especially not his — so why waste energy trying? He can focus on better, lighter things with his admittedly blurred sense of consciousness. Kinder things. Fun things.So he doesn’t care to remember the building’s importance.
Relationships: Celine | The Seer/Wilford Warfstache | William J. Barnum | The Colonel, Damien | The Mayor/Wilford Warfstache | William J. Barnum | The Colonel
Comments: 3
Kudos: 36





	to dance again

**Author's Note:**

> it’s just tender and sad what do u want me to say

For as long as he can remember, Wilford has made it a point to visit the Manor on October 11th.

He couldn’t remember why anymore. The wheres and whens and the faces were lost to time, but he never brought himself to mind; forgetting things was routine. And though he’s lost so very much, he knows that the subjectivity of memories cannot be trusted — especially not his — so why waste energy trying? He can focus on better, lighter things with his admittedly blurred sense of consciousness. Kinder things. _Fun_ things.

So he doesn’t care to remember the building’s importance.

The Manor is dilapidated, he notes. There’s rot creeping up the trellis, spreading across the roof, emerging through broken concrete. He can’t recall if it’s ever been in a better state, but there are moments when he glances across the peeling coils of wallpaper that the shadows shift into something warmer, a memory, bronzed with an age he no longer understands —

_Glimmers of poker nights and warm laughter and ribbons and lace dresses, of stolen glances in the light of the fireplace —_

His timeline is fractured, moving backwards and forwards all at once, but there is something in the Manor that pulls at him. Something he’s forgetting, something out of focus.

The sun is hanging directly overhead when he arrives, but it’s mottled with shades of grey, fighting a losing battle in an attempt to pierce the thick clouds. The rustle of grass beneath Wilford’s feet pulls his attention from the sky as he crosses the courtyard to the main entry.

Inside, the smell of decay sweeps over him, and he lets out a bark-like laugh. “Oh, you poor thing,” he calls into the halls. “Where’s your groundskeeper?” He anticipates a response, but there’s none, and he huffs a chuckle, hands grazing over dust-coated drapery as he moves between windows to open the curtains.

He pauses as glass crunches below. The mirror, only a short walk across the foyer, is catching some of the new sunbeams, and his smile droops as he notes its splinters and cracks.

He’s got only one step toward it when the door briskly opens. He doesn’t get to hear it shut, already beginning to blather, “Oh, _finally!_ Groundsman, this place isn’t fit for the dogs, so if you would please—“

The figure before him is tall, white suit tidied to every crease. Thick black hair is pushed into his eyes, but there’s a darkness in his gaze that penetrates through, staring right through Wilford without so much as a glimpse into anything that may be going on inside; his expression is a practiced blankness, features schooled into complete unemotion. 

Wilford blinks once, twice. “As I was saying, could you get some music on? It’s dreadfully boring here, and—“

“William.”

 _That_ silences him a moment, hands curling around his suspenders as he gives a hearty laugh. “Now _that’s_ one I haven’t heard in ages! Do I know you, friend? I’m not as sharp as I used to be, so I may need some assistance in recalling—“

_“William.”_

“Is it possible we worked together? I didn’t sleep with you, did I? Not that I don’t think it’s possible, it would just make this horribly awkward, and…”

His throat seems to close up on him when he takes note of the aged cane gripped in the man’s hand.

“Where did you get that?”

Wilford takes a step forward, eyes roaming from the diamond-cut top of the cane to the man’s face. “Damien? Oh my days, is that you?”

The man doesn’t move, but his expression pulls taut when he hears the name.

Wilford closes the distance without a moment’s wait, arms wrapping around the looming figure. “My God, man, it’s been ages! How are you? How’s Celine? Are you and the District Attorney still having those, that was it, weekly dinners? We’ve so much catching up to do,” and the moment he steps back and catches the man’s gaze, he falls silent once more.

He eventually coughs uncomfortably, the silence a bit too thick for his liking. “No, no, of… of course they’re not. My apologies, things tend to run together these days.”

The man eases his hands behind him, and Wilford shakes his head. “Well, nevermind that! Where’s Celine nowadays, then, eh? I would love to see her, if she’d have me. I can’t imagine we parted ways kindly, but then again, the whens and wheres are all a bit fuzzy, you see. And what about that old rapscallion Abe? I saw him only recently! It was a rather funny story, involving a train and this fellow with a delightfully tasteful mustache…”

The man shuffles slightly. “William—“

“And that’s another thing, actually. Nowadays, you’ll find I go by the name Wilford, you see, because William was just too simple for my tastes and—“

“Damien and Celine are gone,” the man states flatly.

And Wilford stops.

After a few uneasy seconds, though, he laughs. “You’ve always been a jokester.”

But the man’s expression doesn’t waver. 

“Where,” Wilford says after swallowing, “exactly have they gone?”

The man’s face scrunches slightly. “There was… an accident.”

Wilford tenses. “An accident? That’s— that’s absurd.”

Something in the man’s face withers, and Wilford feels his heart seize at how terribly un-Damien-like this man’s expressions were. It was like they didn’t fit him on a chemical level, bones crying out for relief from the unfamiliarity. Perhaps he’d remembered it all wrong, but then the idea of forgetting Damien’s face made his stomach lurch.

“Are they alright?” he finally asks.

At this, the man pauses, considering the question. “They are not… who they were before. They’ve changed. They don’t think you would like them very much anymore.”

Wilford just chuckles. “That’s madness, and I would know! We’ve all changed, haven’t we? A little modification is good for the soul!” His laughter tapers off slightly, and he rests on the wall, momentarily admiring the broken mirror. “Say, friend, you remain awfully familiar, but if you’re not Damien… who exactly are you?”

The man braces the cane, shifting it from hand to hand. “Dark.”

“Is it?”

“No. My name.”

Wilford nods. “Ah! Dark, what a lovely name. Well, could you pass a message on to my dear Damien and Celine that I’d like to see them?”

Dark’s lack of expression twists into something guilty, if he could still feel such a thing. “I can’t _do_ that. You don’t understand, they’ve been gone… a long, long while.”

“Yes, but I would like to meet with them, so if you could make them _not_ gone—“

“I _can’t—“_

“Of course you can, clearly you’re in contact with them! Put in a word, say an old friend is—“

“They’re _gone—“_

“If you could stop saying such a thing, that would be dandy—“

“They’re **_dead,_** William! You don’t get it; they are **_dead!”_**

Wilford stills.

“No. No, they can’t.”

There’s a somber sort of anguish in the air, the kind that smothers the airway like smoke, the kind that pollutes everyone in the vicinity with a distinct gloom. 

“How?”

And, oh God, the _guilt_ in Dark’s face. Wilford’s expression sours, shrivels. “What did you _do_ to them?”

Dark opens his mouth, but Wilford snatches the cane from his hands. “You don’t get to hold this, this is Damien’s! Where — where are they? Did you kill them? Did you take them from me?” His voice breaks at the rise in volume.

Dark lifts his hands, palm-up, that universal white flag gesture. The cane’s head prods directly into his sternum, and Wilford spits, “Where _are_ they? Tell me! Tell me, or I’ll kill you myself, you monster!”

Dark’s gaze drops to where the cane sits on his chest, and he gently closes his hand around the wood. Static rolls over his form — fabric shifts and there’s a crack overhead, and suddenly the hand that holds the cane is smaller, smoother, and Celine’s dark eyes meet Wilford’s.

Her voice is smooth, refined to a sharpness, and it makes his chest ache. “Do you understand me now?”

Wilford releases the cane, and it clatters against the dirty floor with a hollow sound. “What…?”

“They aren’t the same, Wilford. They’re not Celine and Damien anymore, they’re not _distinct._ ”

Wilford steps back again, and he feels his shoulder blades press into the broken mirror. “What has this place done to you?”

“They ebb and flow into each other now,” she says slowly, reaching down for the cane. As it passes into her hands, she’s Damien again, and then their voice oscillates between two distinct timbres. “Not Damien or Celine. Something new.”

Now, Wilford has experienced world-splitting revelations before, but to an already broken mind, his head and heart can only ache. “I don’t _understand_.”

Their face settles into Celine’s soft, delicate frown. “I know you don’t.” The cane clacks against tile as Dark steps forward, gaze caught between feeling nothing and everything all at once. “But it’s reality, Wilford, and it’s high time you faced it for once.”

Wilford’s world blurs, and in a few streaks of color he doesn’t care to make sense of in his vision, he’s sitting on the floor, back still flush with the wall. “I miss them so _much.”_

Dark kneels down, trying to gauge the feelings of the man before her. She — God, it was so _hard_ to parse much of any feeling now. That had been a clause in their mutual agreement to get out of this accursed manor: an irreparable change, a permanent mute of any emotion that wasn’t the sheer, burning hate the siblings shared for that bastard actor they once called a friend. But Wilford curled in on himself miserably made her feel something she hadn’t felt in ages, a sparking residue from the long-burned flame the siblings had both carried for the Colonel: she felt _sorrow._ She didn’t love being Dark more than she felt her widespread indifference toward anything else, but Hell if she didn’t wish she could be the person Wilford longed for. 

Slowly, she smooths a hand over his, thumb rubbing circles into his calloused knuckles. “Hey.”

Wilford makes a meager noise of acknowledgement. She raises the cane, tilting his face to hers.

“Dance with me? For old times sake?”

There’s a stutter behind Wilford’s rib cage, and for once, he is stunned into silence, saying nothing as he accepts her hand and rises to his feet.

The two of them pass over the glass on the floor like ghosts, wordlessly taking the first position of a waltz. Wilford’s hand nestled comfortably into the small of Dark’s back, and her hand is secure on his shoulder. They fall into step awhile, but it’s at first unsure — they’d fit together as snug puzzle pieces once, but time had sanded them down into vaguer silhouettes of what they had been before. The fit wasn’t the same, but it didn’t have to be; eventually they fall out of the silent waltzing music and simply sway together, Dark’s head pressed gently against the fabric over Wilford’s chest. His heartbeat kept them in time, beating metronomically to every left-right movement.

And for a moment, just one moment, the Colonel and Celine dance again.


End file.
